The invitation of Jesus is to everyone. Everyone matters equally. Each soul is important and valued regardless of position, station, wealth, strength etc.

There is an opposing framework. It is a framework inhabited by real live vandals like the Joker. This framework says that people get to live who are useful. This framework says that I will only make time for people who can be of assistance to me. This framework questions whether or not it is a good thing for any person to ever be born. This framework understands that it is in direct opposition to the framework of Jesus described in brief above.

Some quotes.

"After ruling our thoughts and our decisions about life and death for nearly two thousand years, the traditional Western ethic has collapsed."
On this triumphant note, Professor Peter Singer begins his milestone book, Rethinking Life and Death. It conveys an attitude of revolutionary confidence that brings to mind another atheistic iconoclast, Derek Humphry, who has said, "We are trying to overturn 2,000 years of Christian tradition."

and this

Singer states that arguments for or against abortion should be based on utilitarian calculation which weighs the preferences of a mother against the preferences of the fetus. A preference is anything sought to be obtained or avoided; all forms of benefit or harm caused to a being correspond directly with the satisfaction or frustration of one or more of its preferences. Since a capacity to experience suffering or satisfaction is a prerequisite to having any preferences at all, and a fetus (up to around 18 weeks) has no capacity to suffer or feel satisfaction, it is not possible for fetuses to hold any preferences at all. In a utilitarian calculation, there is nothing to weigh against a mother's preferences to have an abortion, therefore abortion is morally permissible.
Similar to his argument for abortion, Singer argues that infants similarly lack essential characteristics of personhood - "rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness" [23]- and therefore "[s]imply killing an infant is never equivalent to killing a person."[24].

or this (I obtained this quote off of a description of the book when it was released that I saved to a word file. I don't know better than that from whence it came.):

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence—-rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should—-they presume that they do them no harm. Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm... The author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence. The author then argues for the 'anti-natal' view—-that it is always wrong to have children—-and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a 'pro-death' view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct.

My point in bringing this up is to emphasize that Ephesians 6:10-18 is true. We are engaged in a struggle and we must put on the full armor of God.

Jesus told his disciples when he sent them out that they needed to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

We have an obligation to know we are in a fight and to prepare to fight it with love, joy, peace, gentleness, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control.

The non-existence argument is so simple I can sum it up in several sentences (if I read it correctly).  The absence of suffering is always good even if there is no one to be not suffering.  The absence of pleasure is however merely neutral, neither bad nor good.  Thus not having a child is always good, because no matter how pleasurable a child's life may be, there will always be some suffering.

If Benatar had convinced me that this asymmetry between pleasure and suffering was real, his conclusions would have been hard to argue with.   Unfortunately, he didn't explain why the absence of pleasure is only neutral, and not bad.  The closest he comes to defending the asymmetry is to say that if we accept that the absence of pleasure is bad, we must have as many potentially happy children as possible, and regret that there are uninhabited islands on which people could pleasurably live.  It is strange that someone who is advocating the cessation of childbirth and extinction of the human race would be unwilling to accept these much less counter-intuitive conclusions.

Benatar is on stronger footing when he discusses the harmfulness of life.  The discussion is more complicated than the asymmetry argument, but most convincingly Benatar notes that even the people with the most satisfying lives spend much of their time stressed out, tired, uncomfortable, hungry, having to go to the bathroom, etc.  Nearly everyone's life has some events of profound suffering, such as grieving the loss of loved ones.  Moreover, many people have profoundly unhappy lives (malnutrition, war, etc.).   Even here, though, there is a way around Benatar's argument.  Certainly some people are more likely than others to have happy children.  People in a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, with its extended, brutal, ongoing civil war are likely to have children that profoundly suffer.  But on the other hand, a very rich family in Switzerland might be relatively likely to have happy children.  As long as the Swiss family has a high chance of having a happy child, it doesn't seem immoral for them to give birth.  This, of course, if we reject the asymmetry argument.

On the whole, the book was provocative and peppered with interesting digressions and a surprising variety of famous peoples' anti-natalist quotes.  It was worth reading, but in the end left me where I started--on the fence about the kid question.

«Rien ne bénéficiera autant à la santé humaine et n’augmentera autant les chances de survie de l’humanité sur Terre que l’évolution vers une alimentation végétarienne.» Qui a prononcé ces mots? Nul autre que l’un des plus grands physiciens de la planète: Albert Einstein! Visionnaire, l’éminent scientifique?

Dans un éditorial publié récemment dans l’American Journal of Public Health, David Benatar, chercheur à l’Université de Cape Town, en Afrique du Sud, propose de prescrire le végétarisme, ou du moins de diminuer de façon radicale notre consommation de viande, pour lutter contre la grippe aviaire et les autres zoonoses, des maladies transmissibles de l’animal à l’homme. Par ailleurs, un article récent du journal médical The Lancet vient appuyer le recours à une telle approche préventive, mais pour d’autres raisons. Selon les auteurs de l’étude, l’élevage du bétail contribue fortement aux changements climatiques, en plus de restreindre l’accès à la nourriture dans certains pays pauvres et de causer des problèmes de santé chroniques au sein des pays riches. Ils proposent donc de diminuer la consommation mondiale de viande de 10 % d’ici 2050.

Gilles-Éric Séralini, président du conseil scientifique du Comité de recherche et d'information Indépendantes sur le génie génétique (CRIIGEN) et spécialiste mondial des OGM précise que la diminution de celle-ci (consommation de viande) appelle à une remise en question globale de l’économie mondiale. «Nous savons que l’alimentation carnée est trop importante et qu’elle nuit à notre santé. Nous savons aussi que moins nous mangerons de viande, plus notre agriculture sera durable. Mais pour changer les choses, il faut repenser notre système économique, notre manière de distribuer la richesse et nos modes de production.»

Grippe aviaire, SRAS et maladie de la vache folle sont les plus connues des maladies transmissibles de l’animal à l’homme, remarque David Benatar. Il note aussi que certains chercheurs ont émis l’hypothèse que toutes les infections virales prendraient leur source chez les animaux. C’est d’ailleurs le cas du VIH-SIDA, dont on soupçonne l’origine chez les singes. Dans cette perspective, M. Benatar met en lumière le fait que manger moins de viande constitue une méthode de prévention évidente pour réduire les chances d’épidémies de grippe. À long terme, cela permettrait aussi d’éviter l’apparition de maladies encore inconnues qui naîtraient de l’élevage intensif.

D’ailleurs, en matière de propagation des zoonoses, les modes de production sont de plus en plus montrés du doigt. Le mois dernier, l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO) mettait en garde le monde entier face au danger grandissant que représente la transformation de la production animale. Malgré tout, les avis sont partagés quant aux modes de production à privilégier. Élevage industriel s’oppose souvent à élevage traditionnel. Et il est encore difficile de remettre en question l’élevage intensif. «Le monde doit incontestablement faire appel à certaines technologies des systèmes de production vivrière animale intensive. Mais la concentration excessive d’animaux dans de grandes unités de production industrielle est à éviter […]», déclare Joachim Otte, expert en politiques d’élevage à la FAO. De son côté, Danielle Nierenberg, chercheuse pour le Worldwatch Institute, demande à la FAO de concentrer ses efforts de prévention contre la grippe aviaire sur les grands producteurs de volaille, plutôt que de s’en prendre aux petits fermiers des pays en voie de développement.

Les récentes recherches nous apprennent également que l’élevage du bétail produit 18 % de tous les gaz à effet de serre de la planète en plus d’utiliser 37 % des pesticides et 50 % des antibiotiques. Si on ajoute à cela que la diète végétarienne exige près de 15 fois moins d’eau potable que l’alimentation normale, il y a de quoi regarder d’un autre œil notre steak.

Alors, sommes-nous prêts à passer au végétarisme? Richard Giovannini, président de l’Association végétarienne de Montréal, nous rappelle que la liste des bonnes raisons pour devenir végétarien est longue. Il se réfère d’ailleurs à un rapport très complet du Worldwatch Institute, dans lequel sont citées les conséquences d’une diète carnée sur la santé de la planète. En plus des changements climatiques, des zoonoses et des maladies chroniques (maladies cardiovasculaires, obésité, diabète, cancers), on y parle aussi de déboisement, de consommation et de pollution de l’eau, de quantités phénoménales d’excréments et de pertes de biodiversité. Et M. Giovannini se dit heureux de la prise de conscience environnementale actuelle. «Il est maintenant reconnu que la diète végétarienne a un impact majeur pour sauver la planète. Le discours doit maintenant faire son chemin comme ce fut le cas pour les changements climatiques.»

Références utiles:
- http://www.fao.org/newsroom/fr/news/2007/1000660/index.html

- http://www.fao.org/newsroom/fr/news/2006/1000448/index.html

- http://www.delaplanete.org/Rien-de-personnel.html

- http://www.passeportsante.net/fr/Actualites/Nouvelles/Fiche.aspx?doc=2006030608

Gaia hypothesis preaches that the planet Earth is akin to a sngle organism, its living and nonliving parts working in smooth synch to support life overall.

According to some versions of Gaian-ish belief, humanity and our environmental destruction are merely a disease or cancer that is plaguing the planet. The latest threat to be raised by the green-sane crowd is the 'irrefutable fact' of global warming.

The best solution for the planetary natural ecosystem (meaning everything except humans, even though we live here too) is for all humans to die off.

This post is my response to such self-destructive philosophy. (Or rather, everyone-else destroying philosophy - the noisiest back-to-primitive-living proponents are invariably the richest, most luxury-loving, last ones who would ever leave their comfortable air-conditioned mega-mansions and do what they preach.)

So here's the conundrum - Let' say Gaia taken as a whole is an organism, has a form of sentience, and also control over its natural phenomena such as earthquakes and tsunami. Why would Gaia allow us horrible parasites called humans to infest her surface, instead of utilizing mass extinction to cure herself of the human plague?

Here's my suggested reason: We 'horribly destructive' humans are merely an itchy growth on the skin of Gaia, a tiny niggle. We hardly put a dent into her.

Even if we wipe out 99% of all life with our nukes, Gaia could easily repopulate herself with new life forms in a few million years - a blink of an eye on a geological time-scale. After all, she did it before when the dinosaurs died out.

Ah! There are the two points I want to raise, right there in the preceding paragraph! Human nukes and the dinosaur extinction.

The leading theory as to how and why the noble dinosaurs died out en-masse is the Alvarez hypothesis. Basically, it says that a massive astroid around 10 kilometres in diameter struck the Earth... I mean, Mother Gaia.

This incredible impact released 100 trillion tons of TNT of force, which is about 2 million times greater than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested's mere 50 million tons.

The super-impact released tons of Gaia's fragile, quivering body into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and causing a global winter (heh, 1975 Newsweek magazine). Fireblast, acid rain and total collapse of the food chain are also theorized.

Gaia, obviously badly injured by such a MASSIVE attack, decided that a countermeasure had to be developed. The Moon floating around every now and then simply wouldn't be good enough precaution against another world-devastating meteorite smash.

A massive volcanic explosion might do the trick. Krakatoa in 1883 managed 200 million tonness of TNT. Earlier supervolcanos had even more force. Surely a massive ejection of Gaia's boiling blood and flesh would deflect a rogue asteroid away?

But such a huge explosion erupting from her body would also injure Gaia greatly in and of itself. And the short range (on an astronomical scale) of the explosion might not have the reach to sufficiently deflect a mega-rock headed directly at Gaia. All a volcanic explosion would accomplish is expose Gaia's vulnerable, inviting innards to the astronomical rapist.

A different approach was needed. Thus, Mother Gaia evolved... Us. Humans. Those nasty little tech-monkeys who are going around spoiling Gaia's environmental beauty with our Deforestation, Super Radiation, Smog, Toxics and Hate ("By your powers combined, I am Captain Pollution!")

But for all our spoiled brattiness, Mother Gaia is patient with us... Even to the point of tolerating our occasional nuclear-test tantrums. Because she needs our nuclear weapons, with their massive but focused destruction and off-world capable ICBM mountings.
 
After all, what is a few eons of bad acne compared to a fatal orbital bullet through the heart? Gaia intends to keep us around, as evident by her not smiting us into extinction.

Shouldn't we concur with our wise and revered Mother, and not spite her by voluntarily killing ourselves off in the name of ill-advised 'environmentalism'?

Or do the enviro-nuts care to admit to blasphemy, heresy and apostasy against the Jungle Temple of High Mother Gaia?

To summarize in a nutshell...

Human-technology including nukes = Good for Gaia's long term survival.

Daft, hypocritical and genocidal enviromental greensanity = Bad for Gaia's long term survival.

So there.